


Ions in the Ether

by nigeltde



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Horror, M/M, Season 2, casefic, djinn, first time in a long time, post-WIAWSNB, reference to past underage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-16 01:17:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18084626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nigeltde/pseuds/nigeltde
Summary: When was the last time you trusted happy.





	Ions in the Ether

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Eno's St Elmo's Fire. Big time thanks to [zmediaoutlet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlybride/pseuds/deadlybride) for the talking-though and beta.

They start with Cuevo, demolish the final third of a Beam and wind up at Jack, all in the space of _Temple of Doom_. The day gone, and that lingering dead-eyed look on Dean eases the deeper they sink. He blinks himself alive again, returning across worlds. He smiles when Indy shoots. Colour hits his cheeks. He comes back to Sam. Sam starts fixing coffee. 

It’s not even eleven. The night’s too young to booze out into sleep. He doesn’t want to miss it: Dean stretched out on the bed in his shirtsleeves, almost flat, lit up blue by the TV, head bent up awkward on the pillow so his chin doubled. Sam leaves a mug on his bedside table and takes his own around to settle on his opposite side, sitting up, precarious as Dean shuffles a half inch over, too lazy for anything more than the barest of gestures.

On TV the kids escape, whirl out into freedom, and then, in an unforeseen turn of events, Indy gets himself into trouble. Dean shakes his head, makes a sloppy fist. “Look at him telegraphing. You were throwing better punches when you were twelve.” 

“Had a good teacher,” Sam says, looking down at the top of his head, his thick soft hair, all the gel worn away. Dean tilts up and meets Sam’s eyes. His lashes are very long, at this angle. The upside-down configuration of his features is unsettling, a stranger so close. 

“Coffee,” Dean says, after a moment. Dry and unimpressed. “Make it Irish at least.” 

Sam sighs. Finds the bottle buried in the blankets and pours them each a slug. Dean mulls it through his mouth, swallows, teeth bared. Indy gets the shit knocked out of him.

“How many times have we seen this, you think?” Dean says.

“This one makes, uh. Seven hundred and twenty nine, I think. I can get my notes if you want.”

Dean chuckles, warm. Nods at the screen where the kids kick along the table, hollering. “Here. Here’s where I always wait for the commercial to butt in.”

Nostalgia tugs. “Me too.”

“Altoona,” Dean says, in musing remembrance, tucking his chin back into his chest. He’s frowning again. Sam had always hoped it was a good memory.

Brutal Pennsylvanian winter, when Sam was fifteen. Two months in a peeling bungalow south of the city, put up by the widow of an old war buddy of their dad’s. The man’s wheelchair sat stiff and posed in the corner of the den, under cloth-flower garlands and dusted every morning. Mrs Jefferson had a TV and a VHS player and fifteen aerobics videos stacked square and pink in the cabinet, and _Legends of the Fall_ and _Temple of Doom_ taped off the TV. School kept getting snowed out and Dean never found work and they’d worn the tape thin in those long cold weeks waiting for their dad to pick them up. Sam had felt most days like he was on the rack, his legs aching, his back stretched out, beanpole-thin. A small house that leaked warmth like a sieve. They’d shared a room. 

“We weren’t close,” Sam says, picking balls of lint off the blanket, sending them floating over the side of the bed. He swallows. _Doom_ always gets him thinking about stuff he’s not supposed to. “In your wish.”

The mug rests on Dean’s ribs and tilts dangerously when he breathes, a deep serious inhale. “No.” 

“And I was a wuss?”

Dean snorts. “You have no idea.”

Sam feels himself smile. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, that’s my wildest dream, to have a wuss for a little brother.” Dean knocks the back of his hand against Sam’s thigh. “The wish was that Mom lived. The rest of it just – adapted from there. If it makes you feel any better, you were happy.”

“I was?” 

“Yeah.”

They weren’t close, but Sam was happy. It doesn’t sound believable. “How did you not know?”

“The more I think about it the more I wonder,” Dean says, quiet, and shrugs. “I dunno, Sam. It was just really hard to tell. It felt real.” He drains his mug, taps his fingers on the rim. Flicks a glance up. “Pinch me.”

“What?”

“Pinch me,” he says, all mischief, and grins. 

“Uh, no,” Sam says, and Dean rolls his eyes. 

“There’s the killjoy I know.” 

“Yeah, ‘cause I don’t wanna pinch you and get dragged into some half-assed half-drunk wrestling match.”

“What would be so wrong with that?” Dean says, still grinning. “You worried I’ll put you down?”

“More like the other way around.”

“You wish,” Dean says, droll, and turns back to the TV. 

Sam fiddles with his mug. Does he? He’s been wondering. A djinn seeing inside him, right down. The base wish. There are too many for him to pick. It would have to be Mom for him too. Mom, or Jess. Or that he was normal, pure. Or that something had been different with his dad. They’d been able to talk better, or something. That he’d learned some lessons earlier. 

That something was different with Dean.

“You know,” Dean murmurs, quiet enough they could both pretend it was never said, “I never watched this once when you were in college.”

Sam chews on his lip. It’s a while before he finds his voice. “I did.”

He darts a glance and Dean is watching him. Whiskey-softened, something guarded still behind his eyes.

“You were this stranger,” he says, words rolling on his tongue. “In that dream. It messed me up, man. I didn’t want to leave it like that. Like we weren’t brothers.” 

Sam keeps his silence. The night is thickly humid, making itself felt. Illinois gearing up for the summer. When he’d found Dean in that warehouse Dean had been damp, fear-sweat and the grease of an unwashed body, deadweight in his arms. 

“I wanted to. Hang around and. Make it right.”

“Make us right,” Sam says. “You would have stayed for that?” Dean looks down at his lap, lips tight. Sam swallows. Wipes his forehead, checks the TV. Credits rolling. The Jack took more time out of the night than he expected, but coming up is _Last Crusade_ and that was always Dean’s favourite anyway, so maybe it was meant to be. 

Horses, snakes. University. To Venice, and Dean perks up at the appearance of Elsa, shifting next to him. Sam refills their mugs straight up from the bottle and looks past her. He’s always wanted to see the canals. He’s read they smell.

Maybe that would be his wish: getting his brother on a plane to the old world. Sauntering over cobblestones, cowed by churches, Dean bitching and dragging his heels and following Sam anyway; a normal person’s little snowglobe fantasy, held and turned over and treasured and released, entirely beyond the limits of his world.

Things slip away. He’s watching Indiana Jones in a motel in Joliet with his brother, who has come back to him. It’s enough. Dean wakes him, shaking his shoulder; he’s fallen right down, twisted and bent to keep his feet on the bed, knees poked into Dean’s leg, warm and liquid, motorcycles revving on the TV and the chaos of chase and inbetween Dean muttering under his breath _wake up, wake up_ , tugging at his jacket, his familiar intimate grumble, _get up, drink some water, lightweight man, fuckin bush league, gigantor, need me to tell you everything and then get shirty –_

“What are you talking about,” Sam mumbles, drymouthed, rubbing at his eyes, headache threatening. His fingers tangle with Dean’s, blunt dry and strong, trying to pull Dean’s hand away, palm grazing across the rough sore skin where that thing tied him up, hung him. Bruise on his neck where the needle went in that still that breaks Sam’s heart and he meets Dean’s eyes blinking wide and green and Dean mumbles _Sammy_ , lost, as Sam says _shhhh_ and pulls him down.

His lips are soft. They taste like whiskey and he has stubble coming through and he’s big, propped over Sam, his broad grown shoulders and his fingers clutch tight around Sam’s, pain so Sam knows he’s alive, that last little bit of fright like he was never gonna get Dean back soaking away into the wash of the night and he slips his free hand up the back of Dean’s shirt and digs into his hot skin and hard muscle and drags him into alignment. It makes Dean’s back arch and his mouth slip away with a gasp, wet slide across Sam’s cheek, kiss dragged along his brow as his hips fall in and they rub, Sam tight in his jeans already, feeling his brother swell up for need of him, fist punched into the mattress for purchase and for angle.

“I’m no good,” Dean whispers, abashed, a confession hushed in the space between them, hand sliding down to work at Sam’s belt, broad and deft pressing against Sam’s dick, making him squirm. “I’m no good when we’re not brothers, it messed me up, I couldn’t think, I think about you too much.” 

“You think about me,” Sam gasps, stunned, bolt of heat all through him, grabbing at the back of Dean’s jeans. His legs part to hook around and Dean groans _always always_ so deep and loud Sam kisses him again, swallows the sound, tries to bring it back to the hush but Dean has him now, thrilling hand on Sam’s dick and Dean whispers _remember when we used to, you used to like it huh_ like into Sam’s skin is the only place it could be said, to remember that they used to find each other when they were young and stupid, before Sam went away, before he fell in love with someone else. Huge feeling in his chest, wild need so big that panic lights him up a little, makes him stutter and Dean must be able to tell.

“I got you,” he says, eyes glittering, working Sam’s dick so good – “I got you, hey Sam, I got you, come on, let it go, I got you.” Sam leans up and takes his mouth again and Dean obliges, open, wet, soft inhale through his nose, a sound Sam had forgotten about, that he hasn’t heard for years on endless years. He rolls them with little effort. Their clothes go. He’s on top, grinding down into Dean’s palm and Dean makes a startled hot sound that pulses right through him, direct current to his dick.

Dean’s mouth is the same but the way he kisses is more assured, searching, like he’s seeking out Sam’s difference, finding Sam bigger and liking it. Sam feels taller now, harder, and the way he wants is harder too, not formless whole-bodied worship but keen, muscular. Hungry. He wants Dean. He wants Dean to have him.

“Christ, Sam,” says his brother smearing wet around the head of Sam’s dick and stroking it down, hot panted breath on Sam’s cheek, slow sure tug up and down and faster and Sam moans into his mouth, balls heavy and full already, shivers in his thighs and sweat in the crease of his elbows, on his chest, heart rocketing, too soon, too quick, like a cresting wave all that good feeling and Dean’s hand and mouth breaking him through, a whimper as he seizes up tight and comes.

Opens his eyes to Dean craning his neck, down at where his hand curls, and he looks up again all blown out and shining, reeling, and says, “I never stopped--”

“Yeah,” Sam wheezes, drugged, black at the edges of his vision, rolls them again sloppy and boneless so he’s underneath and slips his hand down. Dean’s dick is perfect, perfect like the rest of him, hot and big, sliding through the mess on Sam’s stomach, hair trimmed neat like he taught Sam was right like he’s always taught Sam everything and Sam’s breath catches, throat aching, the head of Dean’s dick pressing into his belly, tender weight of his balls soft on Sam’s thigh, their bodies the same now, big and grown and urgent and it feels closer than he’s ever been to anyone and he gets a hand on Dean’s ass to keep him close and tight and feels his muscle flex and whispers _fuck me._

Dean whines in his ear and he whispers again, wanton, coming up from the shocked and blazing depths of himself: _you want to I know, I want you to, I want it, I want to feel you, I want,_ as Dean fucks in hard and comes, pulsing slippery and warm against Sam’s skin, strain in his shoulders and his teeth set into the curve of Sam’s neck, bowed.

“ _Dean_ ,” he breathes, into Dean’s mouth, kissing again already, lazy, slipshod to match the way Dean rides in the groove of his hip, little sparks and aftershocks like a dance on his skin, through his nerves. Sweat and a wet mess and his legs want to wrap around Dean and never let go. His eyes slide shut, the dark going deep and liquid, sinking limp and exhausted. 

Minutes lost to that and then Dean moves. Mouth against Sam’s shoulder, lips light on skin, lazy, where he bit, below, where it hollows. Wet drag that turns into pressed kisses, his hips moving again, just for the touch. His palm running up Sam’s side, down his shoulder and arm, like he can’t believe the muscle there. Everywhere they meet skin on skin there’s sweat. Sam turns his face into Dean’s hair. It tickles his nose. 

“I meant it,” he whispers, and Dean stills. Tilts his head up, meets Sam’s eyes. Tongue on his bottom lip where it’s swollen, red. Probing for blood, maybe. His eyes still mostly black. His hand on Sam’s chest. 

Sam offers him a smile. Nerves growing through the haze. He feels his cheeks heat. He thought Dean would – he has no idea, actually, what he thought would happen, if Dean would still want him in the first place. It became harder and harder to imagine over the years. He’s changed. They both have.

He still wants it.

“I would have let you, if you ever asked. In a heartbeat,” Sam says, and Dean loses colour and looks away. Lifts his weight, rolling to the side, giving Sam a moment of panic but he doesn’t go far, propping himself up on an elbow to loom above. “It’s okay.” Dean reaches out a hand and trails fingers soft across his face, smoothing his eyebrows, pulling his eyelids down. Tender. Tracing his throat, his collarbone. In the dark again, Sam’s heart twists so hard it hurts. “Say it’s okay.”

“Jesus, Sammy,” Dean says, above him. Wonder in his voice. Fear. His hand curls into a fist on Sam’s chest, bearing down like an anvil. “I can’t even – yes, it’s okay.”

“Good,” Sam says, and feels a smile bloom right through him, lazy, victorious, and opens his eyes to see Dean as a mirror, creases at the corners of his eyes and his teeth shining.

“Yeah,” Dean says. “It’s good.”

::

A spring deluge lurks, four hundred and fifty miles south. Love, Tennessee, where there’s a woman gone missing, her car abandoned orderly and locked by the side of the road. Middle of nowhere. Sam found the case yesterday. Her car’s been towed already by the time they drive past, an anonymous patch of dirt and a tree and asphalt and fields. Blue-black clouds, horizon to horizon, heavy in warning. The sky doesn’t want them. No one down here does.

Caged in a tiny small-town Sheriff’s office, beige, laconic, water stains on the roof, Dean reads the scene report and follow-up and frowns. They’re doing the rounds in their Fed outfits and the rain broke as they parked the car. Sam’s jacket soaks through to his shirt, clumsy and constricting. His shirt cuffs chafe, his tie strangles, his collar won’t sit straight. Dean’s hair is flat. Everything irritates.

“And how exactly is this a federal matter?” drawls the Sheriff, leaning back on his chair, behind his desk, more bored than mad. His moustache bristles fat to the edge of his cheeks. Most of his attention is reserved for the clock.

Dean ignores him. Scratches at the bruise on his neck and leans towards Sam and says, “This look familiar to you?”

Sam scans the sheets. Jennifer Smith. Only child, mother dead, father in a home. Works night shift at the Little General on the Jacksonville road until three nights ago when she never made it. Missing between the hours of 11 and 2. Alone back at the motor lodge they find the same thing outside Toronto in January and a month ago Lansing, and they don’t need to pore hours over the map to find the point between here and there: it was Joliet. 

“What the fuck?” Dean says. He’s hunched up defensive, a shadow against the window, shoulders high, collar raised, arms crossed over his chest. “I killed it, right? You saw me stab it.”

“You killed it,” Sam says, firm, sitting at the table. Folds the map and gathers his papers together: reports, photocopies, a photograph of the Smith girl. She’s pale and sad, dark-eyed, long dark hair. He closes the folder over her and looks at his brother. “It could be anything. Could just be human.”

Dean seems unconvinced. Draws the curtains and scans the street outside, grey afternoon light leeching his colour. Tense and hunted, locked away back into his own body like he has been two days now; it’s been two days since Sam got close enough to touch him the way he wants, two days waiting for his opening but he can’t find a way to make it happen again and he can’t get it out of his head and he’s been going slowly nuts over it: he showers and sits in the car and smiles at cashiers and walks aimless through the day with Dean’s lips pressing into his, chapped and yielding, the hot blunt crown of his dick pulsing wet stripes into Sam’s skin and his sticky collapsed weight afterwards and the blank and blinded peace that brought, suffused through Sam’s body. The quiet. The awe Sam caught in his eyes. Dean wants him, still. The way Sam changed doesn’t matter. What he’s done, what he might become. Dean would have him anyway, if only he’d let himself.

Snaps in the air, movement. Dean, trying to get his attention, clicking his fingers: “Hey, space cadet. Wake up.”

Sam blinks, focuses. Dean’s watching him, concerned. The sky rumbles. “What?”

“I need you with me on this.” 

“I’m with you,” Sam says, meets his gaze direct and Dean flushes, draws in a deep breath and turns his face back to the street. 

“Sam…” 

“It’s okay.”

“I need you focused on the hunt. A djinn--”

“I know,” Sam says, “we shouldn’t,” but they’re still trapped, breathless, the moment stretching out. It is dangerous, Sam’s starting to see. It clouds him. He fell asleep last night thinking about his brother’s hands and woke up that way too. It’s close on a liability. He looks back down at the folder. Jennifer Smith. Yeah. “We shouldn’t,” he says again, “on a hunt,” but something has hooked Dean’s attention, swivelled it away and to the street: holding back the curtain, his back ramrod straight, frozen and pointing like a dog. Before Sam can even open his mouth to ask, he’s drawn his gun and he’s gone. 

The door swings behind him. Through the closing gap is just the veil of rain, grey-out, shattering on pavement and rising to a haze.

Sam can’t catch up, beating a path through it. He chases Dean’s shadow half a block, turns a corner to see Dean peering through the windows of a closed-up hardware joint, hands cupped against the glass, smearing dirt, butt of the gun cracking indecently against the window.

“Dean,” he hisses, as a truck follows him, turns off Main and heads their way. “ _Dean_.” The truck slows, nearing, and Sam pulls his badge, holds it up and waves him past, confident with his coat flapping like he’s some _Law & Order_ detective, old-timer face inside glaring. The rain drives needles into his skin, wherever he’s exposed. He’s drenched. Dean behind him has kicked a chain-link fence open and ripped honeysuckle aside, started rattling the handle on the back door.

He can’t get through. He steps back, glares at the lock and raises his gun.

“Hey hey _hey_ ,” Sam says, darting a glance around, grabbing his elbow to drag him back under the porch, the leather thick and saturated under his hands. “Talk to me.”

“You saw it?” Dean’s fierce and pale, blinking water out of his eyes. 

“No. Saw what?”

“The djinn.”

“ _Your_ djinn? No. You killed it. Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Dean says, and shakes his head, distressed frustrated twist of his mouth. “No. Yes.” He looks left, right, searching the ends of the street, tin fences held up by rust. Lifeless. The truck gone. “Maybe there were two?”

Sam shakes his head. “They’re solitary.”

“There _must_ have been two.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t just a person? With tattoos or something?”

Dean closes his eyes, runs his hand through his hair, down his face, dragging a dismayed expression, hollow and fearful. His fingers rest against the faded bruise on his neck, just a yellow smudge now, all but invisible. He nods, sharp. Opens his eyes.

“I’m sure.”

::

“Unlikely,” Bobby tells them over the phone, rocking Dean’s certainty. They’re back in the room. He’s never heard of djinn hunting in pairs. Every recorded instance is of their solitary vampiric existence. “Sounds more like a vetala, or an okami. Or plain old human evil.” Dean listens and makes the right noises, promises they’ll look into it. Ends the call and folds his cell back into his pocket, speaks to Sam without looking at him.

“I’m finding a butcher. You put together a list of likely spots. Abandoned places, you know the drill.”

He’s tense around the mouth, the eyes. Freckles standing out despite the overcast. 

“Dean--”

“Trust me,” he says, grave, halfway to a plea, and Sam says _okay_ , soft; and like that control of his day disappears.

There are four abandoned buildings in or near town that Dean decides fit the bill. Sam holds the list in his hand, damp blurring blue pen, scrawled on the back of a county records sheet: a barn on Old Junction Road; an abandoned granary; a condemned house on the edge of town; and Dean’s favourite, the hardware store. They clear that one first, stalking through fallen shelves, tetanus lurking on the floor. Blankets nest in a backroom office, long disused. Dean kicks through them like a body might fall out and deals with the disappointment fairly well. Holding a bloodied knife seems to calm him down again. 

The condemned house, out past a dogleg turn west. They slow on the road: an ancient camper blocks it from view, listing on flat wheels. Scrawny kid out front cooking franks on a fire underneath an umbrella, someone somewhere screaming about mud. Going past, Sam meets the kid’s dull eyes as they flick up. Dean puts his foot down. 

“Could have been worse,” Dean says, a mile down the road, and turns on the wipers. 

Sam nods, tightness in his lungs, eyes on the sky outside his window, warming his hands against the heater vents. It never got that bad, and even when it came close there was always Dean there to say never mind, never mind, I’ll sort it out, broad solid grip on the back of Sam’s neck, doing what he could to make Sam smile.

Other side of town and Sam gets caught on wire, forcing his way through the Keep Out chainlink surrounding the granary, his hair catching and pulling, his hands scraped up, trying to hurry. Dean pushes on heedless, into the murk. The big silo has imploded completely, the elevator an arm raised lonely to heaven. Through the trucking bay into the bare graffitied guts of the building and Sam turns, slow, careful, breathing through his mouth. In every corner are sifted piled mouse droppings. Dean stops, ear cocked. From the floor above comes a dull hum but when they climb the ladder and poke their heads through it’s just the wind playing the rafters and the holes in the walls, spiderweb machinery pitching it up into a song. In amongst it Dean turns and turns, a chime glinting in the spokes and rotting grainsacks. He re-sheathes his knife, trouble growing on his face, doubt. 

Even in all this he’s the most beautiful thing Sam’s ever seen.

“Lucky last,” Sam says, aching for him. His brother nods, firming his shoulders, his jaw. The amulet winks gold against his shirt.

The barn has no roof. Nothing’s hiding here. Dean clears the place anyway, methodical, silent and driven, the stalls and the creaking loft and the outhouse too. Sam waits for him outside the big crossplank door and looks up. The rain has stopped. The sky is darkening prematurely. He tingles, electricity in the air, something building. His wrist aches where the break healed. He can’t hear birdlife, or anything alive. 

Something’s not right, here. They should give this up.

“It’s a djinn,” Dean says, behind him. Comes up alongside, shoulder jostling Sam’s. In this grey indistinct land he seems old, carved into the world, for forever. He takes Sam’s breath away.

“Pinch me,” he says, and Dean flicks him a sardonic glance, tilts his head to indicate: cater-corner to the barn are the remainders of the farmhouse: foundations, a chimney, vines doing their level best to claw down the last few half-walls. On the west side is a cellar door. 

There’s a heavy chain looped through the handles, padlocked and gleaming. Sam looks down at it, dread building in his chest. 

“That lock look new to you?” Dean says. Sam grimaces and toes at the links. The doors clank against each other. “Let me.” 

Dean tugs at his jacket and Sam shrugs him off, swipes his hair out of his eyes, takes hold of the chain, sets his feet and shoulders and heaves. 

The lock and chain hold. The hinges don’t, and the whole assembly comes free in a wrenching metallic _screek_. Sam stumbles back a few steps and drops it, thudding on the sodden ground.

Dean looks him up and down, eyebrow raised. “Damn, kid,” he says, keen, and Sam hides a grin and shakes off the twist of pleasure it gives him, pulls his flashlight and crouches to peer into the darkness. Empty, as far as the light penetrates; but in the far corner--

He turns off his flashlight and ducks in further, straining his eyes. Something lumpen and pale. “What’s that?”

Dean bends double, cramming next to him to look. “That shape at the back?”

“Yeah.”

Dean purses his lips and shakes his head. “Well, you saw it first. In you go.” Sam nods, puts his flashlight in his pocket and Dean mutters _God, fuck_ , slaps his knife into Sam’s hand, turns around and lowers himself down into the dark. Calls the all clear. Sam passes it back and follows.

It’s cold under there and damp, chilling down the back of his neck. Swimming through the dark. His fingers feel pruned. The cellar’s lined with shelves, jars, cans. A boiler rusting in the corner. Sam splits away to the right, easing along the wall, ducking to avoid the spiderwebs. Nothing moves. Nothing makes a sound, beyond the soft crunch of his brother’s footsteps. They could be the only people in the world, here, buried deep. Who would find them? All they have is each other.

They meet at the far end. The shape it turns out is just light, filtered in from a crack in the floorboards above, hitting a discarded quilt. Sam lifts it gingerly. Underneath on the bare dirt is a rat, bloated, swollen, waterlogged. Something shifts in its skin; something teems. Its eyes are open.

Sam’s stomach churns. Cold sweat on his skin. 

“Hungry?” Dean says, looks at him deadpan and Sam drops the quilt, flooding with relief, and makes a grossed out face and laughs, socks him in the chest. Dean sways back and forward again, smug and amused and with him. Like it comes straight from Sam’s heart the sky breaks under a rolling boom of thunder. 

Dean jumps. About to spook and Sam grabs him by the shirtfront and Dean’s hand locks around his, dry, strong; testing. Sam reels him in slow. Watches his eyes fall, lashes dark. He’s tilting his head when Sam ducks so they meet right. His knuckles are pressed to Dean’s heart. Lips dragging wet, they kiss careful for an age, building promise and then Dean breathes and opens and Sam’s tongue catches on his teeth, his tongue and he brings his other hand up to grab rough into Dean’s hair and Dean makes a muffled sound, smeared against Sam’s mouth, desperate, leaning up to press harder; he has to lean up now, Sam realises, with a scalding flush that crawls his skin and wakes his dick up, that’s what’s different, those few extra inches and all those years of Dean complaining about them: maybe he doesn’t mind so much after all.

Dean tries to walk him back, shove him, a long body press but not down here, not in this dank gloom: Sam holds his ground and breaks away, through Dean’s clutching hands, pants _hold up, hang on_ ; Dean blinks at him, dazed. Lips puffy and a long day’s work etched into his face, bruised eyes and a weariness that Sam feels in his own bones. But a solid result. No djinn. Whatever they’re after here, there’s no threat to his brother from that angle. It was a good day’s work, and now they’re done, and they can get somewhere comfortable. Sam feels a grin spread across his face.

“Yeah, I’m hungry,” he says, and ducks in again to murmur against his brother’s skin, and feels him shiver. “I’m starving.”

::

They stop at a diner, overfull, too much light and too many people. Leaving, greasy bag in hand, their timing is lucky, the rain paused again, suspended heavy in a great net but the gutters are full and there’s another drum roll of distant thunder. The air is thick and electric. Dean’s walking too close behind him, bumping against his shoulder, kicking his heels. They parked down the street and it’s been twelve hours since Sam felt completely dry and he couldn’t care less. Every time he looks back Dean is staring at him, stunned one second, dark with promise the next.

A car pulls over ahead, a ways down the road, squealing and spraying water. Four doors fly open and Sam’s instincts scream and bang: to their rear is just the black night, island of burger joint light and no one else about but there’s something _wrong_ in the air, buzzing, crackling, raising the hair on the back of Sam’s neck, prickling down down his spine, tingling his fingers. Something wrong, and alive.

There’s a church across the road. Standard, white. A box with a steeple and a spire and from that spire, streaking the night in a bright electric blue, steady lightning stretches long and flickering tendrils into the sky. Thunder cracks directly overhead, a snap like the fist of God.

“Holy shit,” he breathes. He can’t look away. 

Thunder again, the sky tight, swollen. Up ahead a family has piled out the car, heads craned back, their doors still open. They yelp and jump in unison. A clear girlish giggle peals out, hysteric, elated, shrieking: “Oh my _God_!”

“No,” Dean whispers; when Sam looks it’s like he’s shrunk, whites of his eyes showing, his hand fumbling towards Sam, fingers twisting in Sam’s shirt. “Oh, fuck, Sam, this is bad.”

“No, no,” Sam says, hushing, quick, covering his hand, coming around to block his view. “It’s called something, uh. It’s a natural phenomenon, listen. I’ve read about it.” Dean shakes his head. Flicker of blue in his eyes and pure fright and Sam frowns, yanks him sideways under a shopfront porch, gets him out of line of sight. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s just static. Trust me.” 

Dean drags his gaze to Sam. The clouds break on a last crack of thunder and the tension in the air zaps away, fire dissipating, a plummeting sheet of rain that hits the road with a slap. There’s another squeal, more laughter and doors slamming hurriedly. Somewhere a dog barks, high and frantic.

“See, it’s just weather,” Sam says. Points at the spire, bare and plain like nothing every happened and Dean’s doubt eases, sinks; the corner of his mouth lifts and it banks a sharp and pulsing heat in Sam, heart thudding. It’s like he’s a kid again, jumping every time Dean looks at him. Dean can tell, his eyebrow arching. Always could.

“You call _that_ weather,” Dean says. “You think this is normal?” Sam nods, licks his lips. Darts a glance behind. No one there to see them any more, pelting rain eating the lonely street light, dark descending further. Just an average soaked-out night in the Tennessee boonies. “You’ve read about it, huh.”

“Yeah.”

“College boy,” Dean says, sly, amused, and Sam steps close, shifts him just by his nearness backwards into the deep recess of a shop doorway, Dean’s eyes locked to his, Dean’s hand in his hair already like he knew it was coming and Sam kisses him, deep and open, pulls a needy sound out of him before Dean wrenches his face away and gasps, “Sam, _wait_ , I’m trying to think, we need to think about this.”

Sam waits, even though he’s waited so long already. Brings his breathing under control. No one’s going anywhere. Dean’s looking to the side, frowning, with his hand still tangled through Sam’s hair and his lips dark; if there were enough light they’d be red, blood high and hot under Dean’s skin. Sam remembers what that looks like. He remembers what it’s like to turn Dean on. The first time Dean touched him, cherry-red cheeks and lips, his wondering hand on Sam’s skinny chest. He must have felt Sam’s panicky bird-heart. He’d been so gentle.

He falls in helpless and nudges his nose along Dean’s cheek. “Aren’t you sick of waiting,” he says, and feels Dean’s distance wilt and slip away, turning to catch Sam back into a kiss, slipping against each other, heat banking, curling pleasure and they never did this enough before, he never got to indulge like this, luxurious velvet drag, Dean’s taste and his breath and Dean groans, hand dropping to cup him sure and eager, direct.

“You got bigger,” he mumbles against Sam’s mouth and Sam’s dick throbs, hips grinding into Dean’s hand and he slips his own fingers up the back of Dean’s shirt, digging into firm muscle, the heat that his jacket traps. Can’t draw him close enough but he can kiss him and feel how much Dean wants to touch him. He sets his hands on either side of the door, Dean caught between, and puts an inch of space between their mouths. 

“What do you want,” he says, dips back in, licks across Dean’s bottom lip. Water thuds behind him, into saturated ground. “What do you want, you want me to suck you?”

Dean tips his head back to thunk on the glass. Shakes _no_ and Sam brings his hand up to his face, there’s no way to resist him and Dean turns so Sam’s hand slips around, sucks Sam’s thumb into his mouth. Hollow cheeks and his teeth sharp on Sam’s knuckle and his tongue flat against the pad.

“Yeah,” Sam whispers, dazed. “If you want.”

Dean kneels.

Sam has him so backed up against the door he has no real place to go, crammed in, forehead against Sam’s belly while he opens Sam’s jeans, fighting the denim and the strain of Sam’s dick inside. Pulls him free into the shock of air, hot breath and calloused fingers making Sam gasp, buck forward. He’s leaking already and as he watches Dean licks the taste right off him. Christ, his open mouth right there; Sam’s hands clench into fists on the window with the effort of staying still.

Dean jacks him a couple of times, smearing wet down, head bowed, concentrating. Focus that makes Sam harder, darker; he sees himself change, in Dean’s hand and dribble beads of precome so tight and needing and Dean opens for him this time, takes the crown into his mouth and Sam moans and his hand drops to Dean’s shoulder, knees shaking as Dean tongues him, breath breaking in his chest, shuddering.

Dean hums, maybe reassurance, maybe just to fuck Sam up more, vibration everywhere it feels best. His hand is a claw in Dean’s jacket, leather soft in his hand.

“Too careful with me,” Sam says tight, strained. “We could have been – doing this from the start, why did you stop? Why didn’t you ever--”

Dean pulls back, wipes his mouth on his wrist.

“You know why,” he says, thin. “Shut up and let me--”

Sam unlocks his fingers from Dean’s shoulder and cups the back of his skull, guides him back down. Dean swallows around him and he feels his own jaw drop, the shadowy lines of Dean’s lips stretched, seeing it and feeling it, he’s losing his mind. Disbelieving that it’s permitted. The scant times they had, Altoona and after, always secret, always hurried: it was never like this. Never Dean’s mouth. 

“I dreamed about this,” he whispers, and Dean pushes down and moans, long dark lashes on his cheek and a crease on his brow and Sam says, “you did too, didn’t you, you’ve been thinking about this, at night, when it’s just you and – remembering what you used to do to me and – it’s okay it’s just a helping hand it’s just – helping out, it doesn’t mean anything. Liar. Liar.”

Dean’s fingers dig into his thighs and he takes Sam so deep and tight Sam groans, spit drooling down to his balls as they draw up and his thighs shaking and it’s everything he can do to stay still, let Dean find his limits, grab him around the base and curl his tongue around the head and come down again, finding a driving rhythm, sucking as he draws back, faint graze of his teeth that hits Sam like a shock.

“You wanted to. Christ, mess me up, I could always feel that, you think I didn’t know?” he says, and he’s in Dean’s throat, squeezed, wet at the corner of Dean’s eyes as he swallows and he says “oh shit, oh fuck Dean I’m gonna,” tugs at Dean’s hair and comes, clenching, as Dean slides back, exquisite, painful, tongue working again and his hand milking as Sam fills his mouth up, long and pumping.

“Everything,” Sam rasps, when he has half his mind back, and Dean looks up at him, wrecked, shining and used, chest heaving, streak of come at the corner of his mouth. “Whatever you wanted, whatever you thought you couldn’t have.” 

Dean swallows, drops his eyes and folds forward, nose poking into Sam’s belly, breathing hard. Sam braces his free hand on the door and scratches light through his hair and lets him recover, towering over his brother, holding the back of his skull, keeping him close, as his own runaway heart staggers back into place.

::

They ruin the sheets, back at the motor lodge. Sam puts him on his back and sucks him off so slow the last five minutes are just curse words, hoarse, lost, Dean’s fist braced against the headboard and his chin thrown back to bare the pillars of his throat, his belly fluttering, his dick red and leaking. When he comes Sam takes it on his face, spilling across his mouth, his cheek, catching in his eyelashes.

“ _Sammy_ ,” Dean says, his voice changed, ragged, fractured by awe. He touches Sam’s lips, tentative, disbelieving. Sam kisses the tip of his finger and feels himself tremble. It’s been a long, hard year.

Later he washes up, drinks a gallon from the tap. Stands in the bathroom door and watches Dean collapse into sleep, gone under in seconds, his forehead smoothing out, untroubled. Sam crawls in to join him in the damp and cooling sheets, jaw aching, lips raw. Rests his hand on Dean’s stomach, every cell glowing with a feeling so warm and good he’s almost embarrassed by it. 

Dean wakes him some time after, fretting, deep in a nightmare.

“Hey,” Sam mumbles, sleep-dry, lifting his head and nudging; Dean’s rigid, seized up and scowling and Sam says _hey_ again louder and alarmed; shakes him, palm to chest. “ _Dean_.” Dean’s eyes fly open, his lips curling back from his teeth. Fear and fury.

“You’re not my brother,” he snarls, racks in a broken heaving gasp that sounds like Sam’s name and jerks up halfway to sitting, awake suddenly, aware.

“I’m here,” Sam says. Dean’s skin is burning, hot and slick with sweat. It’s dark. “You’re okay, you’re here with me.”

“Sam.” Dean scrabbles for him, hand on Sam’s face, grabbing at his shoulder like they’ve just been through a near-death. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, everything’s fine.”

Another shift, Dean twisting, sitting up fully, shaking off his touch. The lamp flicks on. He stares at Sam. Turns his gaze around the room, vacant, a slow dazed drift. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he says, soft, and sits up too. “You were having a bad dream.”

“Jesus,” Dean says, weak, passes his hand over his face and looks down. They’re both still naked, sheets pooled in their laps and Dean’s pale, troubled; head bowed away, he can’t look Sam in the eye and that’s warning enough. Sam knows what’s coming.

“Don’t,” he says, and Dean flinches.

“You gotta wake up, man,” he says, voice sore, like he’s always said, Sam too much the dreamer, sights set on somewhere better instead of what was in his grasp. “You gotta think about this.” 

“Don’t talk like that.”

“I started it then.” Dean’s fingers hover in the air, powerless, confounded. “I started it now.”

Sam shakes his head. “It’s okay.”

“You were fifteen.” He grimaces. Sam freezes, flushes. “The first time, you were fifteen.” 

“Don’t do that. I want it, you have no--”

“ _Barely_ fifteen.”

“Well not any more,” Sam says, sharp, and Dean glances at him, another up-and-down. The moment stretches. Shift of their sheets and the patter of rain outside and eventually Dean sighs, huge and heavy. Rueful.

“Well, you got me there,” he says, dry enough that Sam feels okay to touch him, the strong curve of his shoulder, and Dean ducks his head and swallows. “I want it. This. Us. I can’t stop thinking about it. You don’t even – it’s the first time since we lost Dad I feel like – there’s something _there_ , you know. Something for us, that makes it worth it.” He meets Sam’s eyes, drags his lip through his teeth. “I want that so much.”

“You can have it,” Sam says, leaning forward. “You’ve got it, how can you doubt?” and Dean, sombre, reaches like a dream across the space between them and pinches him, twists the skin over his heart sharp and piercing and Sam yelps and thumps him in the chest, hard, bouncing him back off the pillows, shocking him into a smile. Sam thwacks him again, thud of fist on muscle. “What was that for?”

“Just making sure you’re with me.”

“Where else am I gonna go,” Sam says, and the fight dies in Dean, and the glitter in his eyes, lying back, exposed and startled. Gold in the lamplight. Naked to his waist. Sam dares his skin again, palm on Dean’s belly, shifting up, slow and secret hears Dean’s breath catch and answers for the both of them: “Nowhere.”

::

The morning, bright, and too early. They’re both wrecked. Dean with huge black circles under his eyes. Sam feels grainy and thin, tapped out. It’s raining again, if it ever stopped, light and inconstant. There’s a bit of leaf stuck on one of the wipers and it smears a wet arc in front of Sam with every beat. He’s in his backup sneakers and his feet still feel soggy. Much longer in this place and they’ll be sprouting moss.

He’d spent the rest of the night on his laptop, culling small fragments of information about the town, Jennifer Smith, djinn in general; mostly just watching Dean slip in and out of nightmares, shaking him when it got too much. A long blurry haze of time given way now to the car, and rain, and breakfast.

McDonald’s coffee, black and shit, and McMuffins for the early start, heading out past Beresford. The scenery loops like a tape, spooling endless and impossible to distinguish: field, field, trees, field. Trailers trucks and flags. Bobby’s on speaker.

“Sam, would you tell your brother he already knows my answer?”

“Sam says you should look harder,” Dean says. Sam glares at him. Swallows the last leaden bite of his muffin and shoves the wrapper in its bag, throws it over his shoulder. He wishes he had some water, to rinse the taste away, stale and cloying at the back of his throat. The sausage curdles in his stomach. He’s still hungry, somehow.

“I did look harder,” Bobby says. “They’re loners, boy, with big territories. I doubt it’s a djinn and if it is, it’s not connected.”

Dean shakes his head. “It’s a djinn. The one that grabbed me, it had a partner and that partner kept on through here. It’s hunting.”

“What’s your proof?”

Dean’s silent, because he has none besides a _feeling_. Sam had hoped after everything that the matter would be dropped in the morning, but his brother’s clinging like a terrier.

Sam clears his throat. “We did find a place where something was sleeping,” he says. “And – there’s a pattern. Coming down from Canada.”

“A _pattern_ ,” Bobby says. Dean rolls his eyes. “You’re getting railroaded by your own paranoia. Not once in all the years I been doing this have I heard of them hunting in pairs.” 

“Well,” Dean says. “Now you have.”

“Don’t get smart with me, boy. Bending my ear about the weather, like no one ever heard of rain in March,” mutters Bobby, and Sam glances across. They’ve been talking? When? How did he miss that? What else have they been talking about, behind his back? Dean looks firmly ahead. “What have you got _on paper_. Missing girls?”

“ _A_ missing girl,” Sam says. “With a suspicious family history.” Dean’s turn to glare. 

“It’s a djinn.”

“How do you know?” Sam asks.

“I _know_.”

“Look, just.” Bobby sighs. “Keep an open mind.”

A muscle in Dean’s jaw ticks.

“I will. Thanks, Bobby,” Sam says, hears Bobby sigh again.

“Watch out for your brother.”

“Always do,” Sam says. Dean sniffs, affronted. “See ya.”

“Suck-up,” Dean mutters, as Sam puts his phone away, smiling.

“How much longer?”

“Ten miles?”

Sam nods. Raps his knuckles on his knee. “He’s right, that we should keep an open mind. Smith’s grandmother--”

“It’s a djinn,” Dean says, quiet, set. “Trust me. The old guy’s seen a lot but he hasn’t seen everything,” but the Beresford rail depot, once a key link in the waterway supply chain, they find rusted and busted, with teetering dented freight cars and a big hollow tin building, walls fallen from their posts, half a roof left that the rain drums with a cavernous echo, obviously empty and without sign from the moment they draw up. Dean hauls himself out of the car and turns, tight-faced, in the dappled overgrown greenery.

“Watch out for poison oak,” is all he says, and heads for the freight cars.

That leaves the shed for Sam. He pokes behind collapsed debris, stomps around listening for the hollow boom of a basement. Nothing. Blackberry canes arching long and treacherous and probably eighteen hundred rats but aside from that the place is clean, and too open for a djinn anyway. Only a single far corner that’s dark and protected: it has the remnants of a hobo camp, charcoal and a log stool and an empty tin with the label long peeled off. 

Disappearing into the gloom high above dangles a chain, the links strong, stainless. It ends about a foot above Sam’s head, swaying gently, soft chiming clinks. Sam frowns at it, head craned back.

Tugs lightly. It’s caught, and he pulls past the resistance and something creaks and wrenches, light spearing through a gap in the sheet-roof and a winter’s worth of stagnant water funnels down in a rush and douses him, reeking, rust-smell and thick and gritty with rotted leaves and dead mosquitoes.

He stands there in shock, miserably soaked, down to his skin. 

“Well,” he says to himself, down at his dripping hands, trying not to think about what’s in his hair. “I think we’re done here.”

Outside the rain mists light against his face. Let up, when he finally needed a rinse. He should be pissed at Dean for forcing them into chasing phantoms but when he looks there’s no one to be pissed at. No one there at all. Dean has checked the cars and then just kept going it seems, out beyond the clearing, warped rails leading to nowhere. Leaves rustling wetly and the odd birdcall and water dripping under his collar. He’s alone.

“Dean!” he calls, rough, deep, stepping down into the grass, filling the woods with his alarm, and Dean appears. A shaking branch turned aside and his hunched shoulders pushing through, hands in his jacket pockets. Subdued, thoughtful. Sam goes to meet him, sneakers squelching unpleasantly. 

He raises his head as Sam approaches. _Not in my car_ , Sam expects, brushing his bangs off his forehead, unable to hold back a pout. _Put your walking boots on_ , but Dean blinks at him, jaw dropping, and breaks out into a laugh. Actually clutches his belly.

“Oh, man,” he says, eyes dancing, and claps Sam on the shoulder. “You remember in Bakersfield you fell into that pond? Running away from the cops?”

Sam makes a face. Fourteen, hopping a fence right into body-warm rancid water. He’d emerged head to toe in slime, kept finding bits of the smell on his nails, in his creases, for a week. Dean had had to strip him and hose him down before they got back to the car, the whole thing sworn to secrecy. “How could I forget.” 

“Klutz,” Dean says, soft, fond enough to warm Sam through.

“Where were you? I came out and you were gone.”

“Just thinking.” Dean tilts his head, looks Sam head to toe. “You were worried about me?”

“No,” Sam says, but it’s obvious: Dean’s moods, his nightmares, dragging Sam around half of West Tennessee on the barest smell of smoke and no fire in sight. Starting back up, together. Not a week out from his dream-world. There’s plenty to worry about, if he was gonna start worrying.

“Don’t worry about me,” Dean says. “That’s my job. I worry about you. Come on, it’s getting dark.”

“It’s not even lunch,” Sam says, but it has grown dim; under the trees, with the thickening clouds, the air has faded and chilled. At the car Sam shucks all of his top layers, shoves them into a laundry bag and takes the towel Dean pulls from the emergency duffel, musty but dry. Does his best with his hair and pulls on a soft and threadbare hoodie, long-forgotten. His wrists poke out. Dean folds his arms and leans on the car, watching him.

“So. No djinn,” Sam says, when it becomes evident that someone has to say something. He’s crouched, wrestling his laces with stiff cold fingers. Dean grunts, and Sam glances up and catches him watching, his eyes dark, heavy.

“You look ridiculous,” Dean says, voice gone low and rough and Sam flushes, twisty and hot, pleased, fumbles the laces loose to be kicked off in the car and straightens, hands going into his pockets automatically. It makes him feel like a kid. “Look at you blush, Christ. I’m going to Hell.”

“Guess I’ll see you there,” he says, quiet. Dean shakes his head and props his elbow on the roof, rubs his hand across his face, fixes him with a hungry look. Sam raises an eyebrow. “Okay, Randy. We’re on a hunt. Concentrate. Jennifer Smith’s mom--”

“Not again,” Dean groans, stretches out and pulls Sam in by his belt, stumbling. Sam grabs at his shoulder for balance. This close, in this light, Dean is pallid and luminous, eyes blazing green. Sam could count his freckles. “You don’t want me to concentrate. You’d rather drive me nuts.”

“I would,” Sam says, grinning, “but hear me out,” and Dean groans again and drops his head, thumping into Sam’s collarbone, hot blast of breath. Sam chuckles and palms the back of his neck, short hair tickling. Finds himself settled in against Dean’s body. It’s a nice place to be. “Smith’s family--”

“Sam--”

“I checked last night. The grandfather disappeared but they never found a body. There were rumours and then the grandmother drowned and get this: Smith’s mom died when she was twenty-seven. The same age Smith is now.”

“Don’t.”

“I couldn’t find her grandmother’s date of birth but she was under thirty when she died. What if this is a vengeful spirit?”

“I _saw_ it.”

Sam knuckles his chin up and holds his gaze. “I believe you saw something. But we’ve _looked_ , Dean. And what have we found?”

Dean nods. “Yeah. It’s all very clean, isn’t it?” His gaze drops and he leans forward, tilting for a kiss. Sam plants a hand on his chest, presses him back against the car and frowns. Dean looks at him, calm, waiting. 

“Absence of proof isn’t proof,” Sam says, slowly, and Dean rolls his eyes, worms out from where he’s trapped, from Sam’s empty grasping fingers, heads around to the driver’s side and swings himself in. 

Sam spreads his hands on the roof of the car and breathes.

A moment, and then Sam’s window winds down, jerky and halting. When he bends to peer in Dean is stretched across the front seat, reaching for the winder. The amulet has fallen out his shirt and winks in the gloom. Waiting for Sam, an amused twist to his mouth, his eyes soft. 

Just looking at him turns Sam inside out.

“Come on, little brother,” he says. Sam feels himself tremble. “What’s say you and me go gank this son of a bitch.”

::

In the car, the fields flashing by in twilight reverse, sky cracking with rain, sitting there with a hollow fear that chews and gnaws his insides, growing, another piece of him eaten with every mile Dean ignores him, Sam says:

Would you at least admit the possibility that it’s a spirit.

Just tell me what you’re thinking so we can be on the same page.

I’m so gross, Dean, I need a shower. We have to go back to the motel.

You’re freaking me out. Would you look at me?

Talk to me. You’re not thinking straight. What, some bad weather and you think you’re--

You know what, pull over. Pull over, I’m calling Bobby. 

This was too soon after the last one. We should never have done this, it’s messed with your head. 

He can’t breathe. He says, voice cracking, “This is about us, isn’t it,” and Dean flicks him a glance, unreadable. “You think – just because something nice happened – it means something’s wrong. But you can have this.”

Dean nods. “Can I? Since when?”

“Since _now_ ,” Sam says, insistent, voice raised and Dean smiles for him, sick, dismissive, absent any humour. “Don’t treat me like a child. This is real. It means something. It means something to _me_.”

“Sam,” Dean says, and sighs. “Man, you don’t understand how hard it is to tell.”

“ _I_ can tell.” 

“We’ll see.”

Sam presses his lips together, shakes his head. “It’s good, Dean, you said yourself it’s a good thing. Can’t you let yourself be happy?”

Dean snorts. “When was the last time you trusted happy,” he says. It’s just about the worst thing Sam’s ever heard.

They keep driving. It’s too dark and they’re moving to fast to try anything with the wheel.

When Dean pulls to a stop they’re not at the motel.

::

The rear door of the hardware shop is broken in, splintered ruins and a hole in the jamb, the lock kicked three feet into the corridor. Dust still floating.

His brother has torn through two rooms already, the back office and a little garden section with a patio, banging on walls and waiting, frowning, for secrets to reveal themselves. Hard set look on his face. Sam makes a grab for his jacket as he passes and gets shrugged off easy.

“Stop,” he says, airless, helpless, panicking, black doom opening up underneath his feet, “Dean, _stop_. You’re acting crazy, you have to see that,” calling fruitless and ignored as Dean slips a corner into the shop proper. Sam whirls, dizzy, to follow him, ducks around the last remaining shelf and catches him, finally, corners him up front, crowded in before Dean can take a swing at him, arm across his chest slamming him back against the wall and like that rides Dean’s struggle out, the test of his strength, Dean muttering _motherfucker_ wild-eyed and desperate. “Trust me. Be with me on this.”

“Wish I could,” Dean says, gathering his breath for another fight and Sam leans his weight and with his free hand grabs Dean by the back of the neck, firm around his skull, bone on bone, dust flung into the air, and Dean cranes his chin back and says “Fuck, Sam,” through gritted teeth, “think about it. There’s no world where--”

“ _This_ one,” Sam says, “ _This_ one is--”

“This one isn’t _real_ ,” Dean says, eyes big and earnest and the plea in his voice is terrifying. “Listen to me. These things get inside your head.”

Sam presses his thumb into the point of Dean’s cheek, hard. “Feel this?”

Dean huffs, frustrated, jerks back. Pale thumbprint filling in with colour. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

“Then what the hell will convince you?” Sam says, high and wild, and sees Dean’s mouth open to say _nothing_ or maybe something worse and kisses him before he can get there, hot and fast, and Dean makes a protesting noise, denial, tries to shake Sam off but his hand slips down around Sam’s waist to gather him in closer, press tight into muscle, his broad round strength, as big as the world.

Dean breaks back, lips full and shining. “This isn’t real,” he says, same way he might say _hey there_ or _c’mere_ or _like that_. Sam’s fingers in his hair cupped around the back of his head, tugging him back down as he says “Trust me,” ducking to kiss up Sam’s neck. He nips a bite that makes Sam whimper. “You gotta try to--” 

Sam shoves his jacket off his shoulders. Dean’s wrists are in his hands and he draws them high and pins them one-handed, stretches Dean out. Dean gasps. His hips roll against Sam’s and Sam whines, to feel how hard he is. 

“Think about it,” Dean says, sets his teeth in his bottom lip, eyes dancing. “Come on, genius. _Think_ about it.”

“I don’t want to,” Sam says, and Dean because he always has obliges. Puts him on his back and slides in so close, skin to skin with their sweat mingling and the warming weight of the amulet nudging up his chest, salt on his lips, the room humid, the bed squeaking underneath them, loud and so intimate it’s just another thing driving him up to the cliff: any time Dean moves it’s like a heart attack, slow and good. His leg folded up and air compressed out of his lungs and Dean’s dick in him deep and huge and Dean staring down at him, blazing, alive.

“Hottest thing I ever saw,” he says, rough low voice that makes Sam’s cheeks flame, his insides twist, a curling worm of flattered pride. Sam has a hand on his ass, feeling his muscles flex, keeping him so close he can barely get any movement, boiling and crazy. “Hottest thing I ever touched.”

Sam moans, burning, dick aching, leaking untouched. He reaches above, to brace against the bedhead, Dean’s face turning into his arm as he goes, pressing, wet of something – tears? “What,” he gasps, “what’s wrong,” and Dean’s reply is to settle up on his knees and bend Sam’s leg higher, wedge him open more and fuck a groan out of him so raw Sam barely recognises it as himself, heart pounding in his ears, beating him senseless: stretched and full of Dean and Dean over him and Dean saying round and muddy and blurry Sam, Sam, Sammy, you gotta be with me, right, just like this, you gotta stay with me, you gotta stay with me.

You gotta wake up, he says, and Sam says, no.

::

Dean looks like shit. Haggard, red-rimmed eyes, skin slack and grey. He’s slumped in a chair at Sam’s feet, head propped on his hand, staring up at a bag of blood. The line, Sam realises, comes down into the crook of his elbow. It’s dark in here. Digital clock on the far wall, blue neon numbers too blurry to read. Something over his shoulder is beeping.

His shoulders hurt. His wrists hurt.

“Hey,” he croaks, and Dean startles, snaps to. On his feet and by Sam’s side. Close up Sam can see his puffed, bruised jaw. He was in a fight. 

It’s not a fight Sam remembers.

“Hey, Sammy,” he says, in a sandpaper voice, trying a hideous smile. “How you feeling?”

“Like I got hit by a truck.” His lips crack. He licks them, tastes blood. Flexes his hand; makes a fist, releases it. His head pounds. “Djinn?” he says, and Dean nods. “How long--” he draws a deeper breath and coughs, wracking and wet. Dean swears, summons a box of tissues.

“Careful, hey. It’s okay. They said you have pneumonia. It kept you in this. Basement. In town. It kept flooding, you were up to your neck, I--” His voice breaks. “Four days. Sam, fuck, when I saw you--”

He chokes on the rest of it, wretched, ill. Sam stares at him. Four days of zero sleep looks right. 

He wheezes in a breath. “Is it--”

“It’s dead. Trust me, it’s about as dead as anything can get.”

“The woman. Was she alive?” 

Dean squeezes his fingers, lifts his hand so he can perch his hip on the bed and then doesn’t let go. His voice quiet, anxious. “What woman?”

“Jennifer. Uh, Smith.”

Dean chews on his cheek a second. “There was no woman. It was just you.”

“We’re still in Joliet?”

“Oh,” Dean says, face sinking. “Yeah, Sammy. It’s – it’s a bit of a headfuck, huh?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, and closes his eyes. There’s bile at the back of his throat. The more he breathes the more his chest tightens, a huge vicelike squeeze, that turns and cramps and inside beating against is that something big trying to escape, something wild, too much to hold. It rises until he thinks it might break him, his ribs crushed, his heart just plain given out. 

And then, he finds, it ebbs. 

He opens his eyes. His lashes feel wet. They’re quiet a long time. Dean finally seems to realise he’s holding Sam’s hand and lets go, knots his fingers against his thigh. 

“You need something for the pain? How are your wrists?” 

Sam looks down. They’re bandaged. Thin restraints. Wire or fishing line, maybe. Looped around the chain. He remembers the chain, shining.

A sting wakes up in his neck and he lifts his hand, touches the bandaid there. 

Dean searches his eyes. “Did you see Mom?” he says, small, cautious, like he can’t help himself.

“No,” Sam says, looking back. Dean’s fingers twist in the fabric of his hospital gown. Sam would touch him. He’s not sure how that would go. He probably shouldn’t. 

“Dad?” 

“No.” Sam turns his head away. It hurts, his neck stiff. His throat burns. His eyes burn. It’s night. They’re on a high floor, blinds open. In the window the moon is hidden and distant, an icy white glow through the clouds. Thunder rumbles, distant.

“Jesus Sammy,” Dean says, hoarse. Four days of looking has ruined him, made him desperate even here. “You want some water? Are you hungry? Do you want me to get the nurse? What do you need?”

Good question. He looks down at Dean’s hand, on the sheets, next to his. Their knuckles touch, the barest brush of skin.

“What do you want,” Dean says.

Outside it’s raining.

::

The end. 

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback/concrit welcome.
> 
>  
> 
> [rebloggable tumblr link for those so inclined.](http://nigeltde-fic.tumblr.com/post/183401901141/ions-in-the-ether-10861-words-by-nigeltde)


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